This invention pertains generally to provision of extended telephone services as defined above. More particularly, the invention pertains to adaptation of AIN intelligence in the PSTN to allow for delivery of extended telephone services as defined above to authorized users of base accounts subscribed to such services. An extended telephone service may (but need not necessarily) comprise a variation of a standard telephone service that is deliverable through networks external to the PSTN (e.g. the web or Internet, satellite radio networks, etc).
In today's PSTN, end users of standard telephone services (as defined above) have limited options for varying and utilizing respective services.
Parameters relevant to delivery of a standard telephone service can be modified by an authorized end user, but delivery of the respective service invariably remains confined exclusively to the PSTN. For example, parameters of a standard service such as call forwarding can be modified to provide AIN intelligence of the PSTN with a series of telephone numbers within the PSTN that represent alternate destinations to which telephone calls incoming to a telephone line associated with a given base account are to be routed, but these alternate destinations are effectively reachable today only through transmission routes internal to the PSTN. Furthermore, calls forwarded to these alternate destinations generally can not be supplied along with other services. For example, forwarded calls are not accompanied by indications which would be useful to the intended recipient in the event that party is currently busy on another call; e.g. by call waiting and/or caller ID indications that would enable the intended recipient to screen forwarded calls and selectively accept and reject such calls.
It has been suggested previously to use computers linked to AIN intelligence, through the Internet or web, to vary parameters of telephone services (reference the co-pending application by J. M. Dunn et al, cross-references 3 and 4 above). But services associated with such varied parameters are generally standard services, rather than extended services within the present context of definition, and would be deliverable with limited flexibility in respect to combined use of other services (e.g. a forwarded call generally would not be combinable with a standard but reroutable form of call waiting and/or a standard but reroutable form of caller ID).
Similarly, a standard service like "call waiting" can be administered (enabled and disabled) for individual calls originating at a line associated with a base telephone account (e.g. by dialing or tone signalling the characters "*70" before entering other characters representing a called number. It has been suggested to allow for this type of service to be subject to administration through an external network such as the web or Internet, so that the term of enablement or disablement could be varied for more than a single call (refer to Dunn et al cross-reference 3 above), but without altering the essential context of delivery of such service; i.e. the service, when enabled, would be delivered in a standard form and context, and appear as such to the recipient of the service.
Our discovery in this regard is that it could be useful to provide telephone services in a nonstandard context; for example, to provide call waiting indications to a computer, through an external network such as the web or Internet (e.g. as data signals causing visible blinking of a "call waiting" icon in e.g. a computer browser display, or audible clicks prompted by the respective browser application), where the respective indications connote a waiting call on a telephone line which may or may not be separate from a line connecting the computer to the external network. Examples of how this could be useful would be: 1) to make a PSTN user operating remote from a home or office instantly aware of telephone call activity at the respective home or office; 2) to make a computer user linked to a data network such as the web, through a home or office telephone line used for standard telephony, instantly aware of telephone call activity being directed to that line.
Similarly, a standard service like caller ID has no present "extended" counterpart for delivery by the PSTN through external networks.
Considering just extended counterparts of standard call waiting and standard caller ID, we have recognized/discovered that such counterparts would have utility in terms of: 1) enabling a PSTN user at an online computer (a computer actively connected to the web or Internet, e.g. through a telephone line) to become instantly aware of and screen the importance of waiting telephone calls that are directed to a telephone line associated with a base account; and 2) that this type of function could be important whether the telephone line to which the waiting calls are directed is separate from or coincides with a telephone line through which the computer's current web connection is being made. Furthermore, our discovery in this regard is that such extensions of call waiting and caller ID service could be used in conjunction with a variation of call forwarding service (what we presently call "extended call transfer") to allow the recipient of the the extended call waiting and/or caller ID services to selectively accept waiting calls and have them redirected to the recipient's computer (e.g. via an Internet Phone application in the computer) without altering the online status of the computer.
Those skilled in the art will immediately appreciate, from these examples, and from the descriptions to follow that there are many other existing or potentially useful telephone services that could be beneficially "extended" in this manner.